MOVIOCRITY Episode 4 Takes You to the Asylum!

The fourth episode of Moviocrity is here! In this episode, we go to the straight-to-video section of the On Demand queue to check out the Asylum’s DRAGON CRUSADERS.

This film isn’t as well-known as some of their other offerings, and some of their other offerings are more notorious than anything. The Asylum remember is the studio who first introduced us to Megashark in a goofy flick that resulted in a continuing game of one-upmanship with Roger Corman’s New Horizons group. Megashark now has Gatoroid, Mega Python and Sharktopus to keep him company, to name a few. The Asylum also has a habit of doing homegrown disaster films, a la Roland Emmerich on a budget, a practice I could do without but that’s off topic.

They’ve also come under legal and ethical scrutiny for their mockbusters, films designed to cash in on big Hollywood blockbusters (TRANSFORMERS becomes TRANSMORPHERS, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL becomes THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED, etc.). For the record, I have no problem with this practice. It’s a time-honored tradition in exploitation. If you’re going to pick a fight with the Asylum because of this, you may as well pick a fight with Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE, which was called ZOMBI 2 in its native Italy because DAWN OF THE DEAD went under the title ZOMBI in that country. It wasn’t a sequel, but it tried to pass itself off as one.

DRAGON CRUSADERS doesn’t fall under any of these categories and perhaps that’s why it has been overshadowed by other films in the Asylum catalog. However, I maintain that films like this should be encouraged precisely because they are so eager to please that they bring back a lot of the fun many other outfits are forgetting about. Just as you hear people sing praises of the once-maligned Cannon Group and New World Pictures today, my guess is that there will be a devoted cult following for the Asylum in years to come.

In the meantime, enjoy this sword and sorcery-filled episode of Moviocrity. And remember, ADVENTURE WITHOUT SHAME!!!